PC Graphics

[alditrus]

So I recently replaced my old Nvidia Geforce graphics card with an AMD Radeon(TM) R9 380 Series card that my brother used to have. I went to the AMD main website and downloaded the correct driver for my card (where I select my product from the list of drivers). However, after I installed the driver and opened up the Radeon Software app, it told me that my GPU did not meet the minimum requirements. What does that mean exactly? The minimum requirements for what? The driver? Do I have the wrong driver version installed (I have version 20.7.1 installed)? Is my graphics card just outdated and worthless? I'm really not too keen on buying a new graphics card since I'm low on money and graphics cards are super expensive.

What do I do?

(I included a photo of my computer specs just in case that helps)

[marcelegil]

Well this is a comment I wanted to make. Run the game and check playability first. I have found Adrenalin Software unreliable when giving game compatibility. Eg. I am playing The Division 2 with a Ryzen 7 Radeon RX Vega 10, which Adrenalin Software says "NO NO". When I play however, I sometimes get refresh rates of 80, dipping to refresh rates of about 47 when in a heavy battle situation. I have noticed a hand-full of stutters in 128 hours of gameplay, which have only occurred in the Dark Zone when in heavy battle scenes which include multiple other players.

Even worse. I currently have 12 Ubisoft games loaded. With Adrenalin Software version 20.5.1; 2 of the games where rated as "Meet minimum requirement". Today upgraded to Adrenalin Software version 20.7.1, suddenly 4 of the games are rated as "Meet minimum requirement" and 2 rated as "Does not meet minimum requirement". Nothing has changed except the Adrenalin Software. My hardware is the same and there have been no game updates. Best of all, one of the games that my 2019 laptop does not meet minimum requirements is Assassins Creed III released in 2012. Sooooo ... take no notice of Adrenalin Software Game compatibility rating - its useless. Run the game and see how it goes - you will probably be really surprised. I have a feeling that Adrenalin Software's benchmark is whether your rig will manage a refresh rate of 2 billion, if not, it flags you. Hope this helps.

[Matt_AMD]

Please could you provide the information from this link to your post? https://community.amd.com/thread/196209 

In addition, how did you install/update to 20.7.1?

Did you uninstall your Nvidia drivers before installing the AMD drivers?

[fyrel]

The graphics card is old and below the minimum spec for most modern games.

That doesn't mean it's useless or unable to run those games.

I was gaming on a R9 270X until a few months ago perfectly fine.

Try the game you want they probably all work just not at full settings or super high FPS.

[alditrus · Accepted solution]

Solved it! Just figured out that I didn't completely uninstall the previous driver before adding a new one.

What happened is that I was acting stupid and didn't think to uninstall my old Nvidia graphics driver before installing the new card. I tried to uninstall it after I had added the new card and driver, but apparently going to Apps and Features and just uninstalling it from there didn't completely remove it. Same thing happened when I tried uninstalling and installing different AMD drivers; simply uninstalling it from the programs list didn't cut it. I suspected this when I was doing my research on the issue, so I decided to do the following:

1. I downloaded DDU which basically does a completely clean install of any graphic/audio drivers on a PC.
2. Created a restore point just in case things went awry.
3. Booted Windows 10 up in Safe Mode.
4. Ran the DDU to completely uninstall any trace of Nvidia and AMD drivers.
5. Booted the computer back up in normal mode.
6. At this point, my OS was completely severed from the Graphics Card. I went to Task Manager > Performance, and my GPU was completely gone. I even ran one of my Steam games (Planet Coaster in this case, a very graphics-heavy game) and I ended up getting at least a frame a minute. Minecraft couldn't even launch!
7. With my driver completely wiped, I went to the AMD website and installed the Auto-Detect Installer to install the recommended driver (v20.4.2).
8. After setting up the driver, I went to compatibility and found that it had changed:

So it looks like my problem was a driver issue and that I 1) didn't completely remove my driver from the beginning and 2) didn't have the proper driver installed.

I honestly feel pretty stupid for not doing my research before switching cards. Granted I'm not great when it comes to technology but I really should've done my homework first. Still, this little escapade taught me quite a bit.

[lightzout]

Thank you for posting this as I had a nearly identical problem and feel slightly miffed that I simply took the Incompatiibility problem at face value. In fact, I had done a clean install wipe with DDU too so I must have missed a step (like not disconnecting from network so Windows 10 doesn't auto-install and checking device manager etc.) But i posted on a completely unrelated forum asking if anyone knew why a R9 290 wouldn't work when my trusty R9 270 did a respectable job for a long time until the CPU cooler leaked. After installing I played a round of Battlefield 1 first and eveything defaulted to Ultra! It looked like a whole new game and I was ecstatic. Battlefield 5 loaded and the UI/menus were there but black screens. I need to dig in a little deeper and start a new post.